Tylenol Not So Effective in Fighting Flu

It may be the go-to medication for millions as the symptoms of flu begin to do their damage, but Tylenol, at least according to one recent study, may be no more effective than a placebo in fighting the flu.

Researchers in New Zealand looked at 80 adults with flu symptoms. Each was given either 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen (Tylenol) or a placebo four times a day for five days. Twenty-two people in the placebo group and 24 in the Tylenol group had laboratory-confirmed flu virus infections.

The results: The team detected no differences between the two groups in severity of symptoms, including mean daily temperature, maximum temperature, viral load, adherence to the medicine or time before the symptoms disappeared.

“I would say that there’s no clear evidence that it helps, and none that it’s harmful,” said a co-author of the study, Dr. Irene Braithwaite of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand. “But in animal models, it has been shown to be harmful. If you’re going to use it, use with care.”

She emphasized that the bet option for fighting flu is to get a flu shot.

Being Happy Doesn't Mean You'll Live Longer

We all can agree that happiness is a good thing. But just because you’re happy doesn’t guarantee that you’ll live longer.

And while unhappy people tend not to live as long, that apparently has more to do with the fact that often they aren’t happy because they’re not healthy.

Those are two of the conclusions of a team of researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia. They analyzed information from more than 700,000 U.K. women whose average age was 59. They asked the women to rate their happiness, and then followed up with them for 10 years.

In the end, 39 percent of the women said they were happy most of the time, 44 percent said they were usually happy and 17 percent said they were usually unhappy.

The women who were unhappy were 29 percent more likely to die over the 10-year period, compared with the women who were happy most of the time.

But here’s the caveat – poor health at the start of the study was strongly associated with unhappiness, and the researchers found that after they took into account the women’s health, the link between unhappiness and early death completely disappeared.

The study also found that some unhealthy habits, such as smoking, were linked with unhappiness, which also partly explained the link between unhappiness and early death.

“Many still believe that stress or unhappiness can directly cause disease, but they are simply confusing cause and effect,” Richard Peto, a co-author of the study and a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. The new study “shows that happiness and unhappiness do not themselves have any direct effect on death rates.”

Scientists Develop an Ibuprofen Patch to Relieve Pain

Researchers at the University of Warwick in the U.K. say they’ve invented a patch that allows ibuprofen to enter a person’s body without the risks that come with taking the medication orally.

While many people swear by ibuprofen’s ability to relieve pain, reduce swelling and lower fevers, there are risks that come with taking it. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently strengthened the warning labels that accompany nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen.

The new labels warn that such drugs can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke–particularly for people who take them over a long period of time–and these events can happen without warning. Ibuprofen can also cause ulcers, bleeding or even create holes in the stomach or intestine.

But the British scientists say that their patch can minimize these risks by delivering the drug at a consistent dose rate.

Working with a company called Medherant, the researchers were able to put significant amounts of ibuprofen into a polymer matrix that adheres the patch to a patient’s skin. That enables the the drug to be delivered at a steady rate over a 12-hour period.